


Dressing for the Occasion

by Fyre



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drunken Shenanigans, Missing Scene, Post-Scene: Paris 1793 (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: The finest Belgian lace, the persistent threat of clogs and the contemplation of the destruction of the big cutty thing.akaWhat happened after crêpes.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 168





	Dressing for the Occasion

**Author's Note:**

> Salut and merci to [Cliopadra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cliopadra/pseuds/Cliopadra) for working with me on this :D

The thing was, Crowley thought, the _thing_ was…

“S’different outside,” he said, gesturing with his glass to the small, dimpled windows. They were in an empty pub… bakery… thing. Bit of everything, really. Better not to ask how they still had flour and eggs and whatnot, what with the famine and revolting and everything.

Candles too. Or specifically one yellow one. Little stumpy thing on a knobby wooden stick, on the middle of the lumpy table. Smelled a bit like sheep.

Aziraphale harrumphed. No one else could harrumph quite like him. He chased the last scraps of Crowley’s crêpe around the plate, mopping up some honey that _definitely_ hadn’t been in the pantry, judging by the look on the cookie-woman’s face.

“No one will be about,” he said with a mutinous wiggle of his lace-frilled shoulders. “I doubt anyone would even notice.”

Crowley hiccuped then pushed his glasses back up his nose. “You’re joking.”

Aziraphale dragged the wine bottle – third one? Or maybe fourth? – back across the table to refill his cup with a very nice red from some old upper crust sort’s cellar. “Certainly not.”

“You got _arrested_.”

The angel sniffed. “And your point is?”

“My point is…” He paused as Aziraphale topped up his cup too. Both bottle and cup were awfully wobbly, silly rebellious things that they were. “Point… oh…” He squinted across the table. “Point is you’re all foof and frill an’… an’… an’ aristo-thingie! The ones they chop the heads off!”

And very nearly his head too, daft bugger that he was.

Aziraphale pouted over his cup. “I like it,” he said, as if that settled the matter. Crowley opened his mouth to protest. “No, I’m _not_ putting that awful outfit on again! It was heavy and smelly and it _itched_.”

“And that doesn’t?” Crowley demanded hotly, gesturing to Aziraphale’s billowing cravat with his cup, wine sloshing all over his fingers.

“Of course it doesn’t!” Aziraphale retorted huffily. “It’s _Belgian_.”

Crowley snorted. “Well pardon me for not being an affician…ado?”

That was an impressive enough feat to even make the angel nod approvingly. “It _is_ a bit dressy for your tastes,” he said, “but no!” He extended his arm across the table. “Feel that! Soft as down! Light as a cobweb!”

The demon plucked at the frilly mess poking out of Aziraphale’s brocade cuff and right enough, it was exactly as soft as the angel said.

“So it’s the good stuff?”

Aziraphale preened. “Of course. The best.”

“Which,” Crowley said, groping his way back in the direction of their argument, “is what sodding aristos wear.” He smacked his cup down with a thump. “Which is why you can’t go out in it! F’they see you _again_ , they’ll not even bother with the head-cutting thing.”

Aziraphale did that thing with his mouth, all pouty and kissy-face. “And I suppose you’re going to try and stop me?”

Crowley jabbed a finger at him. “I just broke you out of the Bastille! I’m not letting you wander out to get put back in!”

Aziraphale pushed his stool back and got up. He wobbled like a skittle, hands held out to steady himself. “I’ll have you know I’ll do what I dam– jolly well like! I shan’t be thwarted by an evil fiend such as yourself.”

“Oh-ho!” Crowley – with help from a very sensible brain – used the table to get himself up. “S’that how it is?”

The angel wobbled his way towards the door, throwing a haughty look over his shoulder as he wrenched it open, the cold, wet moonlight turning his outfit all shiny and silver and _bloody noticeable_ in the darkness.

Crowley snapped his fingers.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale huffed, trying to whirl around indignantly and losing his balance to stagger out the door and off the step. He caught the frame and wavered there, a darker spot in the gloomy street, his cockade wobbling as unsteadily as he was. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“M’thwarting you!” Crowley growled, teetering precariously out of the door.

“Ha!” Another snap and Aziraphale shone like a jewel in a sweep’s ear.

“Angel!” Crowley wailed, tumbling out the door after him. “You can’t just… frou-frou around Paris!”

Aziraphale – despite his unsteady gait – had clip-clipped off down the cobbles in those bloody fancy shiny shoes. “Watch me!”

Another snap turned sparkly twinkly shoes into clumpy clogs again and the angel clattered over like a bag of rocks falling down the stairs.

“Oh, you _fiend_!”

“M’warning you!” Crowley lolled after him. “F’you keep putting it back on, I’ll keep making it worse!”

 _That_ got the angel’s attention. “Worse? Worse _how_?”

Crowley bared his teeth. “D’you want to still have shoes?”

Aziraphale gasped, horrified. “You wouldn’t _dare_!”

“Try me,” Crowley goaded, raising his hand up beside his ear.

In the thin moonlight, Aziraphale’s pale fists clenched and unclenched. “ _Fine_ ,” he huffed, “you wretch.” He clumped on a few steps, the heavy wooden shoes making him roll like a drunken sailor. “How on earth does anyone wear these beastly things?”

“Cos they have to,” Crowley replied, wavering after him. “Don’t got anything else.”

Aziraphale waited for him to catch up, tugging irritably at the sash across his chest. “Yes, but it doesn’t mean one should go all…” He made a cutty gesture with his hand. “Lock them up, for Heaven’s sake! Let them suffer. Lolloping their heads off doesn’t teach them a lesson, does it?”

Crowley shrugged. “Teaches them not to do it again.”

The angel gave a sudden gasp. “I have a marvellous idea!”

“Marvellous like running around Paris dressed like a meringue?”

A glare shot his way.

“No! We’re going to destroy the cutty-thing!”

Crowley smacked his lips, his brain taking this information, turning it over several times to work out what the hell he was meant to do with it. “No we’re bloody not.”

“Whyever not?” Aziraphale – despite the gloomy smelly clothes – still glowed. Like a very bright candle, he was. “For my side, it would be a good thing! Saving souls! Showing mercy! And for yours, you could say you vandalised things and disturbed the peace!”

Another thought to pick up, turn over and lob out the window. “Not a chance.”

“Crowley!”

“No!” Crowley insisted. “No, it’s a stupid plan! D’you think there won’t be people there?! D’you think they won’t say ‘scuse me, tall, dark, mysterious yet strangely handsome stranger, why are you dismantling our weapon what we use to systematically destroy the oppressive forces that have starved and taxed and left us destitute’?”

Silver-tinted hazel eyes peered at him, the tick-tick-tick of the angel’s thoughts visible all over his face. “No?” he hazarded.

“No?”

“No, I don’t think they would say that.”

“Which bit?”

Aziraphale frowned at him like he was daft. “All of it? Most of them are… whatsit… not educated. They don’t know big words.”

“Radical interpretation of the text!” Crowley wailed. “For Satan’s sake, angel! Loosely! Loosely, they would say that! Or bugger off and leave our murder toy alone!”

The angel sighed moodily and tugged at his sash again. “I really _ought_ to do something, while I’m here.”

“Apart from getting arrested and having a very long lunch?”

“Obviously.” The angel peered around. “Do you think there is anyone about we could help?”

“Could help me by going home.” Crowley grumbled amiably.

Aziraphale swatted him on the arm, then clomped off down the streets. “I’m sure we can find someone.”

Crowley made a face at him, but wandered after him. “How’d’you propose we find them?”

“Them?”

“These people you want to help?”

The angel squinted at him. “Oh. I was going to ask that young man.”

And before Crowley’s eyes, brains and thoughts all lined up nicely, Aziraphale was clumping off towards a man with a very big sword at his belt and a very patriotic tricolour pinned prominently on his hat.

“Coo-ee!” The angel waved. “I say! Could you help me?”

“Shit!” Crowley yelped, bolting after him. He flung an arm across Aziraphale’s chest, pushing him back. “All right, citizen?”

The Frenchman eyed them with suspicion. “He sounds like an aristo.”

“What? Him? Naaaaaah!” Crowley laughed. “Can’t be an aristo! I mean, look at those shoes! And that hat! And d’you think any aristocrat would be daft enough to run up to a member of the revolutionary guard?”

“He’s right… er… citizen,” Aziraphale said in bloody awful French. “I am not an arrested cat.”

Crowley – and probably the Frenchman – turned to stare at him. “The hell, angel?”

“Me,” Aziraphale said. “Not a cat. No tail or anything.”

“No, you idiot!” Crowley hissed. “You know? Posh ones?”

“ _Oh_! Aristoc _rats_!”

“I’ll rat you,” Crowley growled. He swung back to the guard. “He’s just… he’s English! One of our English brothers! Can’t kill a king back home, so he came over to do it here. He’s just…” Crowley mimed drinking and rolled his head dramatically.

“Ahhh.” That seemed to pass muster.

“I want,” Aziraphale said in mortifyingly bad French, “to…” He frowned, then mimed spitting. “Ptoo! On aristos.” He beamed hopefully. “Where are they?”

The guard raised an eyebrow at Crowley.

“What can you do?” Crowley shrugged eloquently. “Tourists.”

Turned out the guard was bored enough to show them to one of the prisons, pointing in through the barred window at the huddle of people in the cell.

“They are for Madame tomorrow,” he said gleefully.

“Right.” Crowley couldn’t see how they were meant to get the poor bastards out. Yeah, the window was pretty big but the bars were thick and their new friend would probably stay to watch the English tourists assault their prisoners and he really, really wished he’d–

A very solid thump and a small moan made him whip around with a start. The angel was standing over the unconscious guard, one of his clogs upraised.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley yelped.

Aziraphale blinked owlishly at him. “Well, I can’t very well break them out with him watching, can I?”

“Break them– how the hell are we meant to break them out?”

The angel stared at him, then generously handed over his clog and stepped out of the other one. “Like this, dear boy,” he said and wrapped his hands around the bars of the window and _pulled_.

It shouldn’t’ve worked. It _shouldn’t’ve_. Solid metal, thick stone, sturdy building.

But the entire block of bars slid out of the wall like a hot knife through butter.

Crowley gaped as the angel leaned through the hole, offering down his hand. Frantic, filthy people were hoisted up and out, into the deserted streets, huddling like frightened pigeons. They looked askance at Crowley and he pointed vaguely in the one direction that seemed definitely abandoned.

When the last of the prisoners fled, Aziraphale picked up the entire rack of bars and slid them back into place and turned a drink-hazed sunshine smile on Crowley. “There. Isn’t that better?”

Crowley – who found he was still hugging Aziraphale’s clog – remembered shackles supposedly keeping a bloody cheeky angel locked up and helpless behind bars half as thick.

“Oh, you bastard,” he said, shoving Aziraphale’s clog back at him and trying very hard not to grin. “You complete and utter _bastard_.”

“What?” Aziraphale said, eyes wide and innocent, as if he hadn’t done a blessed thing.

“Fine!” Crowley laughed. “You win.” He snapped his fingers.

Aziraphale gave a wiggle of delight, shaking out the flare of his coat and smoothing his ruffled cravat. “Well,” he said happily. “This has been a _lovely_ night, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, as they fell into step side by side, the angel clip-clipping on the cobbles again. “It has.”


End file.
